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For real, though
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This is not a post about country music. This is not even a post about rap. It’s not even about the death of the short story. It’s about the need for authenticity in art, and how the current audiences of just about every art form are craving it. In other words, rather than fiction, we prefer non-fiction, memoir, and biography in our books. We want our films to be “Based on a True Story.” And we want our rappers to actually be real gangsters, and our country music stars to actually be rednecks.
If Huckleberry Finn were released today, it’s easy to imagine the mass-market audience responding with a yawn. “Not even written by a fugitive slave.” Fiction is absent from our general interest magazines, replaced by intensely reported narrative features. The message is simple: We want it to be real.
Of course, this writer says that maybe country music is the one place where we don’t demand authenticity.
Some genres are immune from our weird and novel demands. Country, both in its classic and alternative forms, tops them: “I take the truck on into town/ And buy whatever we can’t seem to grow/ I work these hands to bleed cause I got mouths to feed/ And I got 15 dollars hid above the stove.” You don’t hear that and think: I know Ryan Adams is a wine-guzzling short guy with a lot of money, not a poor farmer.
As a writer of plays and short stories, oh, how I feel the burn of all this. I’ve written creative nonfiction, too, but I’m afraid that if I start focusing my writing on personal essays, I’ll run out of subject matter and have to start making it up, like David Sedaris does. What do you think? Why do we seem to crave authenticity now more than ever? It’s not an uncommon question. Postmodernism is supposedly all about authenticity. I suspect the answer is theological.
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Don’t blame racism
“An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies; it reveals the writer totally.” — V.S. Naipaul
Any post that mentions Ryan Adamns and David Sedaris just needs to be responded to.
If you’ve ever been to a Ryan Adams concert, they’re legendary in length and quite a trip. He might sing a few songs, walk off stage, have a few drinks, come back on and play for another 2 or 3 hours.
And David Sedaris - what can I say. He’s brought more laughter into my life with his stories. I have all of his books in both paperback and hardback. Someone gave me his book “Naked” when I was down in the dumps and it made me laugh till my side hurt.
Personally, I don’t look for authenticity unless the author or songwriter tells me that what they’re writing/saying/singing is a true experience of their own. I enjoy a good story or song, fictional or not. It’s the telling of the story that makes all the difference to me.
When I was an undergraduate in college, I took as many creative writing classes as I could fit into a technical degree program, because I loved creative writing in all its forms and manifestations.
I will never forget the Professor telling us ‘if you do not write from your personal experience, it will not be authentic, and I will not be interested’, or something in that vein.
Well, that trashed about 99.9% of the literature and writing I had nurtured myself on and actually enjoyed since I was old enough to read, ranging from Shakespeare to Milton to Asimov and Blish and everyone and every kind in between. THEY did not write from PERSONAL experience, in general. They dreamed, they used their imagination, they carried you to all kinds of wonderful and terrible impossible places and times.
So, anyway, the classes all dutifully prepared their stories and poems based solely on their personal experiences, thinking this bespectacled fool was a kind of literary God and actually knew what he was talking about. The result was indescribably dreary; basically endless mumbling sequences from the diaries of schoolgirls with no imagination and no interests outside of the vapid and the ordinary.
I rebelled and wrote stories which featured all kinds of interesting nonsense, far-future hover-crafts, interplanetary intrigue, insane and cruel English professors gibbering in their towers, torturing brave students, that sort of thing.
He (the Professor) did not like these efforts AT ALL.
I will never forget the moment when I realized the truth of how little I cared about his or anyones elses fixation on ‘authenticity’ in writing. I was standing in his miserable office watching him dribble pipe ash all over one of my poor butchered stories, lying spread-eagled and disemboweled on his desk. He was lecturing me in a monotone on ‘authenticity’. His eyes were completely invisible behind spectacles that reflected the light, such that he looked like an enormous disgruntled frog with bright bulging unblinking eyeballs.
Anyway, I don’t worship at the foot of the idol of authenticity.
Amen to Anlir’s comments about a Ryan Adams show.
And no, he is no poor farmer. But he IS from the South, which I guess gives him a little authenticity.
There is room for both fiction and non-fiction in this world and the best writing contains some of both, I think.
I wonder if the craving for “reality” stems partly from the fact that it is increasingly difficult to write new imaginary stories. It has always been difficult, but as time passes, and more and more great stories have been told, it is hard to come up with more that are original. It requires that dreaded thing called work.
Ahem….
Drill,
Um. Isn’t most of your writing on this blog based on true stories?
Even if the truth of your stories is embellished upon, and stretched here and there, it’s still authentic. And since it’s your experience and you are using universal themes that we all relate to, it is that much more alive to us.
I think that’s at least part of what the professor was trying to get across. “Write what you know”…. And you do. Quite well in fact.
Thank you. Please continue. We’ve all enjoyed it very much.
As for authenticity…
I turn real wood. Grows on trees. Sometimes I even leave live edges on…
I have real sawdust in my real shop, and even use real tools, bust real knuckles and use real sandpaper.
I even make useful items in addition to “Art”.
That authentic enough?
I love Drill’s sense of irony.
I think that’s why “Creative Non-Fiction” is a relatively new and popular genre.
We crave the illusion of authenticity; not authenticity.
Drill,
My creative writing professor actually said that fiction itself is more true and a better teacher than real life. (I guess I lucked out.)
I wrote stories from personal experience and from my imagination, and he liked them both.
Sometimes nothing is more delightful than a little bit of make-believe.
C.S. Lewis and Tolkein have both considered the value of fairy stories and fantasy in their works; try Lewis’ “Of Other Worlds” for more great arguments on the value of imaginative stories.
‘We want our films to be “Based on a True Story.” And we want our rappers to actually be real gangsters, and our country music stars to actually be rednecks.’
I do not buy into the opinion above one little bit. Hardly any films are based on a true story. Certainly fewer successful films are either. I don’t want rappers being real gangsters that go around killing people, doing other criminal acts and treating women like animals when they are not rapping about it. There are few country stars who are rednecks a term invented as a derogatory term by urban wanna be ‘Uber Men’ Yankees to promote a stereotype that doesn’t exist today if it ever did.
Where do people get these weird and strange thoughts that are just based on little more than their imaginations and erroneous untested assumptions?
Reminds me of the funny scene in the movie Sideways.
I would recommend that anyone interested in Ryan Adams should check out “Strangers Alamanac” - a CD he released when he was with the band Whiskeytown.
“But he IS from the South, which I guess gives him a little authenticity.”
Perhaps. But just a minor nit that not all country music is from the South. Lots of great authentic ‘country’ hails from the north, and west too (e.g., “Summer Wages” Ian Tyson.)
We want our films to be “Based on a True Story.” And we want our rappers to actually be real gangsters, and our country music stars to actually be rednecks.’
It’s usually the other way around: we want our films and video games and books to become real life. The authenticity is that that movies show the way it really does happen but the way we oh-so-wish it would happen.
This thread reminded me of a Saturday night last winter when hubby and I were snowed in (actually, everyone else was snowed out, since they all usually come to our house on Saturday night).
Anyhow, either his remote-flipping finger got tired or he nodded off, but the TV was settled on a movie and, with nothing better to do, I started watching it. I think it was called “The Rookie” and as it neared the end I commented that it was the stupidest, most contrived story I’d ever seen and it that confirmed my self-righteous normal position of avoiding TV and movies. At the end, there was some narrative explaining that it was a true story.
I first noticed this issue when the “Million Little Pieces” fiasco hit the fan. Everyone who had taken time to read that book and admired the author for all he had been through felt deceived. When the “truth” that this novel was a work of fiction came to light - did it make it any more interesting? Did it make anyone hate the words? No, it made people question themselves…for trusting that something they had read somewhere was fact.
I like not knowing. I thrive on not knowing whether or not what I am seeing or hearing or reading is true. And who defines truth anyways? The author? The reader? The critic?
Does it matter?